A high-voltage molecule transfer system based on the prior art is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,663,292 issued to Wong et. al on May 5, 1987, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. The Wong system generates a high voltage discharge through a solution of cells and biological macromolecules to cause biological macromolecule transfers and cell fusions.
The Wong system has numerous controls for setting certain characteristics of the high-voltage discharge. Specifically, an amplitude control sets the amplitude of the high-voltage discharge. A burst time control sets the duration or burst time of the high-voltage discharge output. A cycle number control sets the number of cycles in the high-voltage discharge output. A pulse control sets the number of pulses within each burst of the high voltage discharge output. The duration of the individual pulses may also be adjusted.
Once the values for these voltage discharge characteristics have been set, a master trigger switch is activated to produce a chain of continuously discharging high-voltage pulses into a solution or suspension of cells and biological macromolecules. These high-voltage pulses contain the characteristics of the parameters (amplitude, burst time, number of cycles, number of pulses and duration of individual pulses) which were selected. These parameters may be readjusted for each experiment but are fixed during a particular experiment. Moreover, there is no provision for automatically providing timed gaps between groups of pulses.
It has been discovered that the results of molecule transfer operations may be affected by varying the characteristics of pulses generated during an experiment. However, current molecule transfer systems do not provide a mechanism to vary the pulses during an experiment in a consistent, repeatable manner. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a mechanism for consistently and predictably varying one or more characteristics of an output pulse during molecule transfer and cell fusion operations.